Tom Scott's family was so poor when he was growing up that he used to collect wool from bloated sheep carcasses that he would sell to earn pocket money.

"That was in the 1950s when New Zealand had one of the highest standards of living in the world," he says. "It didn't apply to us."

The reason for his family's poverty was the eccentric lifestyle of his alcoholic father who spent most of his life in his room, only coming out to go to the pub. Scott and his five siblings used to take turns to bring his meals to him on a tray "like feeding an animal".

But the experience has not blighted Scott, who is one of New Zealand's prominent personalities, as well as being a prize-winning political journalist, cartoonist and documentary maker.

Successful playwright can be added to that list. His first play, The Daylight Atheist, loosely based on his father's life, has grossed more than $1 million in New Zealand and is now being staged by the Melbourne Theatre Company, starring Richard Piper and directed by Peter Evans.

"I can understand people wondering why anyone would want to see a play about one man alone in a room," he laughs. "But the whole world is in that room - he was a wonderful raconteur and a brilliant mimic. The play explains how such a brilliant man ended up like that."

But he denies that the play is biographical. "I invented a childhood for him and I think I made some good guesses," he says. "You can do things through art that are more potent. By using metaphor you can reach more truths, rather than relying on straight biography."

The publicity from the play has been tough on his mother, who is not interested in seeing a performance of it, he says. "All she said was not to blacken his name. Then she added, 'He was a bigger bastard than you will ever realise'."

Their father only ever called Scott "Egghead", while another sister was called "Horse".

Scott says his siblings, who all went on to lead happy lives, supported his decision to write. They read the script and one sister observed that he had gone easy in his portrayal of their father.

"One of my brothers attended a reading and cried all the way through while everyone else was laughing their heads off," he says. "Then he told me that it had to go ahead."

The family grew up in Fielding, a town so quiet, Scott says, that you could fire a cannon down the main street and, if you hit someone, you would be doing them a favour.

But it had some impressive future talent. Satirist John Clarke lived nearby, as did Murray Ball, author of the cartoon strip, Footrot Flats.

Richard Piper in the MTC version of Tom Scott's one-man, one-room play The Daylight Atheist.Picture: Cathryn Tremain

Scott now lives in a grand house in the hills overlooking Wellington Harbour.

He was encouraged to write The Daylight Atheist by New Zealand's most successful playwright, Roger Hall, after he spoke of his childhood at the 80th birthday celebrations for Sir Edmund Hillary.

That was in 1999 and he finished the play in three weeks, inspired in part by the recent death of an alcoholic writer and friend, A. K. Grant.

"Sometimes I cried my eyes out as I wrote, just as some people in the audience do when they see it," he says.

Scott was conceived in Ireland in a union between his Catholic mother and Protestant father, and born in London. The young family migrated to New Zealand in 1949 when he was 18 months old. The childhood he describes sounds bizarre. His twin sister has no memories before the age of eight, apart from being numbed or frightened. Their father only ever called Scott "Egghead", while another sister was called "Horse" and told to stamp her feet twice whenever she was hungry. There was no explanation for the names.

The family never knew how old their father was because he refused to celebrate birthdays. He never kept his promises to take them to any social outings.

He says his father maintained a steady rage, envy and bitterness towards other people who were doing well, which was just about everyone.

By the end of his life this even included his son, after Scott said on television that his father was a very funny man but had a drinking problem.

"That was it - he never forgave me," he says. "I tried to speak to him when he was sick in hospital but he refused to take the call. When one of my brothers asked him why, he said it was because he wanted his death to be on my conscience."

Scott pays tribute to his mother's care: the children went on to lead normal - and in his case - exceptional lives.

Although he is dyslexic, he soon discovered that he could draw and had inherited his father's talent for story-telling.

Neighbours would invite him into their "flash houses", eager to hear his stories. "I learnt that anything about home was funny and that we were considered eccentric.

"But I never mentioned drunkenness. Instead, I discovered that I could take the sting out of what was happening to me by turning it into a story. That meant I became a bit of a sneak," he says.

Scott has a competitive spirit. He was named political columnist of the year twice with his work at the New Zealand Listener and cartoonist of the year five times. Four collections of his satirical writings and five collections of his cartoons have been published.

He tells a tale about the first production of his play in Wellington. One of the city's established companies, Circa, turned him down, so he decided to produce it himself in 2002, with the help of $40,000 sponsorship from a power company.

But Circa advertisements for their own show took the prime display space, meaning the first weeks for The Daylight Atheist were slow. Then word spread and the last fortnight was sold out, before a second production was mounted in Auckland.

Scott is pleased to report that the MTC's season has already been extended and he says there is a strong chance of it touring nationally.

He plans to come to Melbourne for the play's opening.

The Daylight Atheist with Richard Piper opens on Wednesday. Book on 1300 136 166.